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By Root 2184 0

” he said, “you’re satisfied with very little. You forgive and forget too fast.” But I needed this turning point, or at least this sign. “No,” the master exclaimed, full of scorn. “Though I have no right to reject salvation that comes too late, I cannot call it salvation, for we paid too dearly. A true, redemptive salvation would have had to have come sooner.” He began to pray, his teeth clenched, while in Israel, despite inferior numbers and insufficient weaponry, they were already fighting as in the days of the Maccabees. To lose would mean the end of a dream, the end of Eretz Israel. (I recalled this conversation often when visiting Israel. Israel as recompense for the Holocaust is a far too expedient explanation, one that borders on blasphemy. The two experiences have in common only the people who lived them.)

Public opinion was favorable to the newborn Jewish state. Truman and Stalin vied for the honor of being first to recognize its existence de facto and de jure. The French press dispatched its best reporters and most prestigious commentators. I envied them. War correspondent—what I would have given for that title. Insofar as “Zion in Struggle” needed my services, it was in Paris, as an ordinary journalist-copyboy-editor-messenger.

I therefore lived the historic events from a distance, vicariously: Israel at war, Israel greeting its repatriated children from distant camps and prisons, Israel structuring its government. I read the wire-service dispatches, compared political reports and military analyses, underscored particularly significant images, listed especially striking expressions. I learned to associate names and events: the death of Abdelkader Husseini near Kastel; the attack on Deir Yassin (whose bloody details we did not yet know); the fall of Kfar Etzion; the massacre of a convoy of doctors. I “accompanied” the glorious units of the Palmach as they fought to open the road to Jerusalem and of Brigade 7, famous for its victories in the south. I shouted for joy when the Irgun conquered Jaffa, applauded when Menachem Begin proclaimed his commitment to democracy by creating a new political party, Herut, which succeeded the Irgun, whose officers and soldiers were integrated into Tsahal, the Israel Defense Force. I screamed with rage and sadness when I learned of the surrender of the Old City. And then, in June, I was finally given the right to publish an article of my own, a fictional commentary on the incomprehensible tragedy of the Altalena, which aroused fury even more than pain at Zion in Kamf, for we considered it not only a tragedy but a crime—namely, murder and treason.

After the declaration of independence, Tsahal absorbed all the underground movements on national soil, except in Jerusalem, which was internationalized by the UN and where the Irgun and Lehi preserved their autonomous infrastructures, bases, and commands. The Irgun, short of men and matériel, chartered a ship, the Altalena, that carried about a thousand refugees from displaced persons camps and enough arms and ammunition (donated by the French government) to equip all its own units and others besides. But this initiative posed a twofold problem. On the one hand, it violated the embargo decreed by the UN; on the other, there was Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s fear (whether real, imaginary, or politically useful) that the detested Irgun commanders might attempt a coup d’état. The prime minister’s entourage claimed the two camps had not reached an agreement, while Begins swore they had. The Irgun’s argument: If we were planning a coup, would we have informed the government of the date of the ship’s arrival? Subsequent testimony from many witnesses confirmed that there had indeed been negotiations about the distribution of the arms. The talks failed either because of the provisional government’s fear of being condemned for violating the UN embargo, or because of Ben-Gurion’s unconfessed desire to liquidate the separate armies of the Irgun, the Lehi, and especially the Palmach.

The Altalena arrived off the coast of Israel at Kfar Vitkin, but,